


No Padawan at All

by Deannie



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Gen, Post-Episode: s02e21-22 Twilight of the Apprentice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-05
Updated: 2019-12-05
Packaged: 2021-02-26 22:26:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21676474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: “I want to become the Jedi you see in me,”  he’d told Kanan once. And he’d meant it. But it was never going to happen now. Seeing wasn’t something Kanan could do anymore, and a padawan who’d destroyed his master was no padawan at all. Ezra would have to move on. He couldn’t stay here and remind them all of what he’d done. Not like they wouldn’t have enough reminders. As plain as the eyes on Kanan’s face.Takes place at the end of Twilight of the Apprentice, part 2.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 49





	No Padawan at All

**Author's Note:**

> Hey look! I found another Ezra!
> 
> I am a number of years late on this, but I had dived into Star Wars: Rebels quite happily. I’m sure this story has been written a million times, but here’s my version of one million and one. Enjoy!

_“Breathe in._

_“Out._

_“Feel the Force around you. In you….”_

Ezra opened his eyes and stared out the windscreen of the Ghost’s nose gun; out into the dusty desert surrounding the new rebel base. He snorted at himself as Kanan’s voice receded in his memory. _Yeah, it’s in me, all right._ The Force flooded him. Sang across every nerve. It had been like this since he’d opened the temple. He could feel everything…

Almost.

The Sith holocron was a acidy itch under his skin. Not like the soft whispers of Kanan’s cube at all. It called to him the same way, though. Maybe light and dark didn’t matter as much as the Jedi and Sith all thought. Maybe there was something in between.

He’d ask Kanan, but he was pretty sure that ship had launched. _Launched and crashed and burned,_ he told himself coldly. Kanan was the one thing he _couldn’t_ feel right now, and that terrified him.

Closing his eyes again, he tried to find the comfort that his mast—that Kanan had been teaching him before Ezra had ruined it all.

_“Breathe in. Out.”_

The funny thing was that Ezra knew how to meditate long before he met Kanan. Oh, he didn’t know he was doing _that_ , of course, but he could… clear his mind. Get things straight before he did something stupid. It was the little breath before he made a leap no other lothrat could make. The pause before he charmed his way out of things a two-bit thief on a backwater world shouldn’t have walked away from.

He clearly should have walked away from the Ghost a long time ago. At least then he’d be home. The world outside the windscreen was harder than Lothal. Colder. The world inside was harder and colder still. Images played across his mind as peace eluded him.

Hera’s look when she’d touched Kanan’s face—his eyes, his bandages, the med strip that had spent the whole trip back to Chopper Base telling him how the Jedi would never see again—that look had almost crushed Ezra. The look on Rex’s face finished the job, overlapping with the memory of Ahsoka shoving him away before she sealed her own fate. The world was crashing down around him, one casualty at a time.

So Ezra ran. To the one place he still felt safe.

He remembered the first time he’d sat in this chair, staring out at the galaxy above the only home he’d ever had. Space was nothing like he’d thought it would be when he was lying on the roof of his old broken down tower. Back on Lothal, he’d stared at those stars and watched them twinkle and sometimes… sometimes he hoped that his mom and dad were winking down on him.

But stars didn’t twinkle when you were in space. They were cold and far away. Beautiful as diamonds and just as hard to steal. His parents weren’t up there. His parents weren’t anywhere.

_“Make Mom and Dad proud.”_

Hera’s flip nicknames for herself and Kanan—for her family—felt like a sick joke now, as he struggled to reach out and touch Kanan, felt the man’s wall of anger blocking him out. Forever, probably. _Didn’t make any of you proud this time._ He opened his eyes and drew his knees up to his chest, knowing that meditation was a lost cause.

 _“I want to become the Jedi you see in me,”_ he’d told Kanan once. And he’d meant it. But it was never going to happen now. Seeing wasn’t something Kanan could do anymore, and a padawan who’d destroyed his master was no padawan at all. Ezra would have to move on. He couldn’t stay here and remind them all of what he’d done. Not like they wouldn’t have enough reminders. As plain as the eyes on Kanan’s face.

He’d seen those eyes, just for a few moments as he’d removed the helmet the Jedi had put on for the fight. In those first long minutes after the temple’s collapse, they’d held each other, they’d cried, they’d mourned. And then Ezra had realized that he was now carrying more of Kanan’s weight than the other way around. 

“Let me…” he began, fiercely holding himself together in the face of the tiny shudders that ran through Kanan’s body. “Let’s get you cleaned up,” he finished.

Ezra had frozen for a long moment, staring at the burns that blackened pale skin, at the almost webbed-over orbs that stared at nothing, tears streaming down. It was Kanan’s almost inaudible whimpers, the hitch in his breath that spoke of so much pain, that spurred Ezra into moving again. He was nearly done with his work when the silence ended.

“Ezra?” Kanan’s whisper was soft and rough and Ezra knew what he was going to say. It was all Ezra’s fault, and he knew that. _If you’re going to be a Jedi, you have to be truthful. At least to yourself._

But Ezra would never be a Jedi now.

“Just—Just rest, okay, Kanan,” he said quickly, selfishly dosing his master with painkillers that had the added benefit of stopping the discussion before it could start. “I’ll get us home.”

“Contact Hera,” Kanan had said, longing in a voice that was already fading into exhaustion. “Tell her... Sorry I screwed it up...” His head came up, pointed at Ezra before dropping to the side, and his next words were slurred. “I’m sorry, Ezra.”

Ezra had been shocked by the apology, but Kanan couldn’t have really meant it. What did he have to be sorry for, anyway? Ezra didn’t tell Hera about Kanan’s apology to her either. He’d just told her what had happened in the briefest terms and nearly burned the engine out getting them home.

 _Kanan’s home anyway,_ Ezra thought coldly. He watched through the window as the medtech left the Ghost, his medical drone skimming along beside him. They’d called the man in to assess Kanan’s condition, but Ezra and Kanan had already known the answer, hadn’t they? There’d been no question of Kanan going to the medbay. He belonged with his family. 

And Ezra? Well, he’d go on alone. _Been alone before,_ he reminded himself, the image of the Jedi temple surrounding him for just a moment before fading _. Survived. I can survive this._

With a deep breath, he slid the blast door open, listening to what was happening outside his little sanctuary. The crew was moving as a group from the common area to the hall. Moving as a group, but separating quickly.

“We’ll just… need to make some adjustments,” Hera was saying shakily. Always trying to be optimistic in the face of repeated disaster. “That’s all.”

They’d clearly gotten the same answer from the medtech that the computer on the Phantom had given. Kanan’s life as he’d known it was over. Because of a stupid lothrat who thought he could make something of himself.

“Yeah,” Zeb agreed, tentative. Scared. “Yeah, we’ll… make adjustments.”

“Where’s Ezra?” Trust Sabine to ask. 

“He needs some time to himself.” Kanan. Kanan, sounding tired and worn out. Kanan, who’d shut himself off so completely.

 _Guess that’s your answer, then, Ezra._ He slid out of the gun pod and headed for his quarters, knowing he’d run into all of them but not really caring right now.

“Ezra?” Hera was still playing at being Mom. “Are you okay?”

He sighed, her concern stopping his forward motion. “Are any of us?”

“We will be.” Hera’s hand on his shoulder should have been reassuring, but Ezra wasn’t looking at her. He was looking at Kanan, at the way Kanan’s head stayed down. If those burned out eyes had still worked, Ezra would say they were avoiding his.

“Sure,” he said, gently shrugging her off and heading for his room once more. If Zeb followed him in, he seriously didn’t know what he’d do. At least the Lasat would have his own room again, right?

“Ezra?”

Kanan’s voice stopped him cold and Ezra turned to face him. The sightless man raised his head as if to look at him, but his aim was off. Just served to prove what Ezra had taken from him.

“Don’t… Don’t make any decisions right now, okay?” There was a pleading in Kanan’s words, but the wall between them made it hard for Ezra to trust them. That Kanan knew Ezra was planning to leave was clear. That he wanted him to stay was a little murkier. “We’re all going to have to take some time. We need to protect each other while we do.”

 _Protect each other,_ Ezra scoffed. _Great job I’ve done of that._

“Ezra, we need to stick together,” Hera said, green eyes warm and serious. “Now more than ever.”

Zeb and Sabine didn’t seem to know what to say. Ezra sure didn’t.

So he just walked past them to his room and closed the door.

The Sith holocron itched in his pocket.

*********

“The kid’ll come around,” Zeb stated, sounding not at all sure of it.

Kanan nodded, ignoring the swing of the black world around him when he did. Everything was off-kilter. He had no balance. He wasn’t sure he ever would again. “Like Hera said, we all need to make some adjustments.”

How to adjust to this, he wasn’t sure. But he’d adjusted to worse. Master Billaba had died for him, after all. Left him running from the only world he’d ever known. Left him to learn how to “live in the actual galaxy, with the rest of the miscreants”. If that wasn’t worse than losing your sight, he didn’t know what was. 

His eyes might no longer see, but his mind remembered the images: Hera, falling under a barrage of stormtrooper fire; Sabine, as Vader deflected a laser bolt at her head; Zeb, brought down by Kallus; Ezra, falling to what Kanan had been _certain_ was his death at the hands of that first Inquisitor...

 _“I thought I’d lost you_.”

A lot of things were worse than losing his sight, in fact.

Hera’s touch startled him and he fought not to react. He was flying blind now. Literally. He felt like that scared little padawan, wondering what to do, now he had no one to give him orders. But Caleb Dume was dead. A padawan who’d abandoned his master was no padawan at all.

“We’ll make him stay,” Hera promised.

Kanan’s eyes wanted to look toward Ezra. His heart wanted to search him out, to know what he was feeling, but the boy was a blank to him now. That link was severed. Kanan had already failed him. He’d known the pull of the Dark Side on his apprentice— _his_ apprentice, not Maul’s!—and he’d failed to protect him. To teach him.

 _The Dark Side. It pulls at him. It calls to him._ Kanan had known that long before the Temple Guard had challenged him. At the time, Kanan had responded with the truth: _I can’t protect Ezra. Not even from himself._

“We can’t _make_ him stay, Hera,” he said quietly. He thought he heard Zeb shift uncomfortably somewhere in the darkness. He couldn’t _see_ , and it was frustrating. Like the first time he’d put on a shielded helmet and practiced knowing the world without his sight. He knew he wasn’t the first Jedi to be blinded. Master Kimmanaka had lead a battalion without use of his eyes. The Force could help you see what was there by feeling alone.

But those were things that Caleb Dume had known, and Kanan Jarrus had forgotten so many things since Master Billaba died.

“We can try, dear,” Hera replied, hugging him to her and enfolding him in her smell and her feel. 

_All I can do is what I’ve done_.

“I just don’t think that’ll be enough,” he whispered, feeling his own hopelessness enfold him just as thoroughly. 

The words drove the others off, slowly, and Kanan headed toward the topside gun emplacement, stopping at the bottom of the stairs as he realized he couldn’t find the solace there that he usually did. There would be no looking out the windows, watching the crawlers wander around the perimeter of the base, watching his friends come and go. It should have saddened him, but he realized that, in this moment, he felt nothing. He turned toward his apprentice’s room and felt…

...absolutely nothing.

********

Ezra sat on his bunk and stared into that same nothing as the Sith holocron hummed in his hands. He wasn’t even sure when he’d taken it out of his pocket, but the object warmed him as nothing else was doing right now. The Jedi holocron in the next room murmured softly. Hera and the others were bright energy through the walls. All of them, save Kanan.

Everything sang, called, screamed. It was like the Jedi temple times a million, and he strove for control. He closed his eyes and saw the stars he’d seen there. The stars that shone boldly, not twinkling like the ones seen from Lothal, nor cold like the ones above it. These ones were warm and ordered. The universe as it should be.

And that universe rolled out before him as it never had before...

_I just want to protect me and my friends!_

And he did. Still. He… he loved them all.

_The darkness is too strong for you, orphan. It is swallowing you up, even now._

But love wasn’t darkness. Love was light. It was good. He might be an orphan now, but his parents had lived long enough to teach him _that_.

_I wouldn’t be helpless anymore!_

Helpless to stop what had happened to Kanan. To Ahsoka, Tarkintown, his parents, all of it.

_All of us have lost things. And we will take more losses before this is over. But we can’t let that stop us from taking risks. We have to move forward._

Alone. With his new family, but apart from them.

_To defeat your enemy, you must know your enemy..._

Because knowledge was power was knowledge, right?

_...even practice his beliefs._

Maybe it was better that Kanan had closed himself off so completely. He wouldn’t have to see what was coming next. Maybe Ezra needed to learn to do the same.

_You could hardly have let him down more._

But next time…. Next time would be different.

_Your own path, YOU must choose._

And so he did.

The Force shifted around him, the holocron rising from his hands, twisting reality as it opened. His eyes opened with it.

“Hello, Ezra Bridger.” The voice of the temple was soft, seductive, the room bathed in a calming red glow. “How do you feel?”

_“How are you?” Kanan asked, as the Jedi temple spat Ezra out into the reality of the anteroom where his master waited…._

“Different,” Ezra murmured to the pyramid, as he had to Kanan then. Power thrummed through him, drowning out the world beyond the door. He’d stay. He’d stay and he’d make sure to keep them safe this time. No matter what it took. “Different, but the same.”

“Then let us begin.”

***************

The end


End file.
